I confess that I am not a frequent attendee of the theatre. I have seen several plays over the years from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Cats. But nothing particularly recent – at least prior to this week.
Glory is a play written by Tracey Power about a women’s hockey team called the Preston Rivulettes. As a hockey player, I think the most fascinating thing I learned from this play was that there was a women’s hockey league in the 1930’s!
The play covers the first decade of the Preston Rivulettes. Over these first 10 years the team had a 95% win rate. The captain, Hilda Ranscombe, was regarded as one of the best hockey players at the time.
I was a little hesitant when saw that there were only five actors in the play. Two sets of sisters, Nellie and Hilda Ranscombe and Marm and Helen Schmuck, and one man Herb Fach were all the people used to represent the team and times. Herb was the reluctant coach, the other four women were all founding members of the team. Impressively, the two hours duration passed quickly with these engaging and energetic actors.
In addition to covering the impressive record of the Rivulettes the play also brought in other issues of the times. The play started in the depression and the lack of money was a complication of the team. In fact they had to default of the national championship game several years in a row because they did not have the money to host the winning women’s hockey team from the west.
Hitler was just establishing himself in Germany at this time and there are tensions between Marm Schmuck, raised Jewish and Herb Fach, whose parents emigrated from Germany. In fact, Canada was not welcoming to Jewish individuals at that time and signs were placed outside buildings saying “No dogs, No Jews welcome”. Not a good moment in our history. But one more element of tension lurking in the background of the players and contributing to the interpersonal challenges they faced. These are issues that faced women at the time, the challenge of having a family and still playing sport. The difficulties of unrequited love comes into play between two of the players on the team. It is a sweet and sad element of the play that was sensitively addressed.
The choreography used to convey was one of the highlights of the play for me. It was a mix of Jazz inspired dancing that did a really interesting job of conveying the speed, aggression and energy of skating on ice. As other reviewers noted, the attention to detail was really evident during the ‘skating’ scenes to the point that skaters always ‘stop’ just before stepping off the ice.
The set design was clever in its simplicity. Looking mostly like one end of a hockey rink, the seven pieces making up the u-shaped boards could be moved to create the illusion of a dressing room, train or workshop. While some people commented the scene changes were distracting, I disagree. I was impressed by how quickly things could be moved, often by the actors.
Like the scene changes, the costume changes were often done on stage in front of the audience. It was interesting to see how only a few pieces of clothing, combined with the force of personality of the actors, gave such an accurate representation of the uniforms of the times.
But the aspect that impressed me more than anything else was the dedication the actors put into their parts. The woman playing Hilda Ranscombe hurt her ankle in the first twenty minutes of her performance, but continued through as though nothing had occurred. She showed the same sort of persistence I expect the women of that first Rivulettes team did as they fought for the right to play and the respect of the fans.
Overall, this was a really well executed performance on a little known local story. First presented by the Western Canada Theatre company, I was able to see this great play at the Drayton theatre. I would recommend Glory.
Yes, I realize that my reading list is far from recent.
I have read many of Tanya Huff’s fantasy novels, but this was my first of her science fiction. An Ancient Peace by Tanya Huff is the first novel in the Peacekeeper Trilogy.
My first impressions of this book was that it was dense. It felt like pretty heavy reading, as I was dumped into a complex science fiction world filled with multiple alien races, a crew with deep relationships and a general feeling of history. It wasn’t until I reached the end of the book and looked it up I discovered this is the second series starring the same main character: Gunnery Sargent Torin Kerr. Good news, I have lots more reading to look forward to. Bad news, it makes the start of the book rather challenging to get into.
While I still feel a little like I am missing something, it helped that most of the narrative focused around Torin. Grounded by the Gunnery Sargent, I was able to navigate the rest of the book. I found the story compelling enough I want to read the sequels. I like the strength of the main protagonist; Torin is a strong and respected individual. She is legendary within the military circles of the Corps. While Torin certainly kicks butt throughout the book, she also has an attitude and force of personality that make for a very strong character.
The technology and science fiction elements were interesting, particularly the concept of an evil, manipulative organic plastic. There are multiple alien races. They are not variations on humans either. In fact, some of the races are very different indeed, with at least one being described like a group of sentient giant spiders. More than different appearances the races have different common characteristics. This is often reflected in the dialogue. Huff uses different speech patterns and occasionally an invented phrase to help convey this information. For me the most interesting was the use of zi and zer as unique pronouns for one particular race.
The rest of the crew, a mix of different species and skills, was also interesting. There are five others in Torin’s current crew; three of them are also ex-military while two are civilians. I found Torin’s distinction between military personal and civilian personal interesting. She certainly has a sense that those who have been to war are expected to deal with violence, while civilians should be protected. This really helps to forward some of the conversation about the horror of war.
There are a lot of poignant moments, scenes that discuss the impact of war, discuss racism and deal with preconceptions. It is a strongly written science fiction story, not a light read, but certainly a good one. Easily worth a rating of 5/5 stars.
The Custard Protocol by Gail Carriger includes three novels: Prudence, Imprudence, and Competent. These stories continue in the steampunk world that starred Alexia Tarabotti as a preternatural in Victorian London. Only this time we are following Alexia’s daughter, Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama. Rue is taking her best friend Primrose and Prim’s twin brother, Percy along with Quesnel in her dirigible as she causes havoc around the world.
The books are filled with Gail Carriger’s characteristic quirky writing style. There is an abundance of dirigible hijinks, werewolves, vampires and cleverly colourful characters. Carriger has an engaging, highly entertaining writing style. Her cast of characters are well conceived, colourfully described and largely diverse. These are great books, which I thoroughly enjoyed – once I got in them.
My biggest difficulty was the transition at the start of the series. It reads very strongly as a continuation of an earlier story. And this makes it a little difficult to engage, especially if you are new to the world. I struggled as Alexia Tarrabotti was the first of Carriger’s characters I met and knew. Not unreasonably, Rue has a different relationship with her mother and so Alexia is written differently than when I was reading the Parasol Protectorate. It took a while for me to warm to Rue. In fact I think I enjoyed the third book more, though not the cover. Competence featured the twins, Primrose and Percy, instead of Prudence. As such it featured less of the metanatural form-stealing and more the skills of those who were raised by a vampire queen. I didn’t mind the constant comments on the silliness of Ivy’s choice in hats.
That said, I think Carriger handled the diversity of gay, lesbian and transgendered individuals more openly and beautifully in this series than in her earlier work. While her manner of writing might be what first drew me to her work, Carriger’s diverse and honest characters are certainly what keeps one reading.
I might have thought the brightly coloured covers seemed to target a younger audience, I would still place the main audience closer to adult than younger teen.
Overall: these are excellently written books whose author has a fun, distinctive voice. 4.5/5 stars.
*********
Just realized that there is in fact a fourth book in the series that focuses on Percy in Japan – Reticence. I suppose this means this is not a complete series review. However, it will have to do for now as Reticence doesn’t release until August 6th.
It is finally summer and my goal is to read – at least for the first couple of weeks.
The Highland Magic Series by Helen Harper includes all four books: Gifted Thief, Honour Bound, Veiled Threat and Last Wish. The series stars Integrity Taylor Adair a thief reluctantly pulled back into the politics of the Sidhe courts. Over the course of the four books Integrity is going to have to learn the truth about her parents, the motivations of the Fomori across the veil and her own inner strength.
Highland Magic is an urban fantasy set in the highlands of Scotland. This northern section of Scotland has been separated from the lowlands by a magical barrier originally designed to separate the Sidhe clans from the barbarous Fomori. While Sidhe might claim to be the honourable group, their racist, bickering, manipulative and violent actions really call into question who the true demons are.
Joining Integrity on her journey are her adopted father (human) and close friends (merman, pixie, and wizard). Oh, and then there is Ben, the jinni of the letter opener whose wishes all come with unwanted consequences. The motley crew makes for some entertaining hijinks and discussions of what family means – is it blood or those you choose to be around?
The distinctly Scottish setting is filled with obvious landmarks – Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Obin. At least these are the names of places that jumped out at me. The collection of magical creatures felt more Scottish than American, with a greater emphasis on the Sidhe, Trolls, Pixies and several species I am not familiar with. There were no vampires or werewolves in this story.
But the thing I liked most about this series was Integrity’s perspective on violence – she is a pacifists. This is not an excuse for our heroine to be a damsel in distress. Integrity is very much the type of character to charge, well sneak, forward to get things done. She does question her own non-violence policy throughout the series but in the end she is able to find a way around the various problems in a non-violent manner. I like that we are given a strong female lead whose strength does not rely on her ability to fist punch the problem into submission.
With quick, witty writing and a distinctly Scottish setting I really enjoyed this atypical urban fantasy. I thought it was another successful series by Helen Harper – who also wrote The Lazy Girl’s Guide to Magic series (and many other things I haven’t yet read).
So today, let’s do something we haven’t done for awhile. I’m in the mood for a good bit of ranting and it’s probably tied to the fact that my lower back is so tied up in knots it could probably hoist and hold a galleon’s main sail.
Furthermore, I was seeing some discussion and I wanted to address some of the criticism being offered. But first, some context!
I was speaking with Derek, oh, years ago now and he was commenting on how poorly our modern education system was doing in actual education. In particular, our schools do a good job of informing us of culture but it leaves us poorly adept for processing said culture. Now, Kait is a teacher, so I have some basis for understanding how our education is laid out. And, at least for our neck of the woods, there’s been a recognition of this very shortcoming.
For our interests today, my annoyance arises when people want to give feedback on the entertainment they consume today.
Now, I’m not fully throwing every individual out there as being uneducated. I’m not even going to lay all of this at the feet of the education system. There is indubitably a finite amount of time in which to teach a whole slew of skills and knowledge to a general populace. Expecting analytical dissection of media from your average person is like expecting me to walk away from a workshop class with any understanding of how a car works. I put key in whole and thing moves. We’re all going to have our blind spots. It’s just an unfortunate fact of life.
Thus, I’m not expecting this rant to suddenly elucidate a whole new generation of bright and critical minds. No, my whole goal for this post is to accomplish just one thing:
I don’t want to hear people talk about Negative Play Experiences ever again.
I hate this term. I hate it with a passion. I hated the time before this term’s existence when people groped around for some manner to convey this insipid idea. I’ve seen it referenced as anti-fun (probably from some physics enthusiast dweeb), use pattern mis-match or any number of other vague, jingoistic terms that are never well defined and used as though everyone understands what on earth you’re discussing.
Vernet, Horace. The Artist’s Studio. 1820.
And thus, I’d love to give you a definition of Negative Play Experience. But I’ve never found one. I mean, sure, I’ve read people answer that it’s “anything a game does that bores or frustrates one or more players.”
That’s it. That’s pretty much all the definition you’ll get. Except you’ll have lots of people swoop into a conversation and emphatically state “This game did poorly because it’s full of Negative Play Experiences!” And they almost never get challenged because it’s the sort of criticism that appears to carry meaningful messaging.
I shouldn’t have to point how Negative Play Experiences should be laughed at. But let’s breakdown why treating “anything that bores and frustrates you” isn’t a valid criticism. First, boredom and frustration are two different emotions and conflating the two of them together diminishes the issues behind either. Second, boredom and frustration aren’t cardinal sins in entertainment. This might come across as controversial but stay with me.
Let’s address boredom. Sure, it is pretty antithetical to the whole purpose of entertainment. I would readily agree that if entertainment is boring you then it’s probably not the entertainment for you. The caveat, however, is that just because you find something boring doesn’t necessarily make it bad.
We all come to our experiences, not as blank slates as those Tabula Rasa philosophers once naively believed. We carry with us a mountain of baggage formed from the experiences and education we’ve received to that point. Someone born and raised in the nicest Swiss chalet is going to certainly have different interests than myself. What I find interesting, they’ll probably find boring. This is why entertainment is focused on markets. In fact, a common criticism for a lot of popular media is when it gets too broad in its appeal and loses its interest for everyone. It is not just better to be liked by some and hated by others but I’d argue that’s ideal. The last thing you ever want to make as a creator is something that no one hates. In all likelihood, all you’ve managed to do is make something so bland and banal that it simply elicits no emotion from your audience.
And that is bad.
So I may have no interest in handegg or race cars, and such things may bore me, but others find it exciting. Saying that you find something is boring is actually fine. Perhaps it is ideal. It’s no reflection on the quality of that object, however. It’s merely a reflection of you with that object. By acknowledging boredom you’re just summing up in fewer words that a product or piece of entertainment isn’t for you.
As a point of criticism, however, a creator can’t really take anything from that. So if you’re expecting a creator to take you complaint that “you’re bored,” don’t really expect to be rocking anyone’s world here.
There are, of course, places where boredom can be appropriate feedback. Off the top of my head, if you’re already an established audience then you can comment on changes by the creator that effect your engagement with the product. “I really enjoyed putting digital hats on my soldiers but I find painting nails on their digital pets that you only see on loading screens as a boring replacement” is fine feedback. But even with this example, we’ve already progressed well past decrying nail painting as a “Negative Play Experience” and provided something actually damn useful.
As for frustration, I’m really surprised to see it listed as a problem.
Well, I’m not masochistic enough to be baffled that people hate frustration. I know I don’t like being frustrated.
However, I’m surprised to see people who make a hobby of gaming to be so against frustration. I can’t think of any game that hasn’t frustrated me. In fact, part of the point of games is to create frustration. That’s where the whole sense of challenge arises. If you aren’t overcoming anything then you’re not really gaming. You may be having an experience but I’d be hard pressed to consider it a game. And all of my most rewarding experiences with the hobby has been overcoming great adversity.
Some of the most celebrated video games are also ones with great reputations for causing frustration. Dark Souls made an entire franchise on frustrating the player. And of course there is the whole “bullet hell” genre. And this isn’t even touching multiplayer games where, by necessity, competition between other people is going to cause frustration. And I don’t have any experience with them but the “simulation” games seem to have game play solely around being frustrating to handle.
Of course, there is some frustration that may not be ideal. For example, if say the keybinding for actions are poorly spaced on the keyboard and you’re constantly reaching across fingers to try and do anything, constantly hitting the wrong button and accidentally killing yourself, I can see that being unnecessary frustration. Some things aren’t meant to frustrate and if they do, then of course that is valid criticism to provide. But that’s just the ticket, explain why said thing is frustrating to you.
If your problem is that “I don’t like X because I lose to it.” Well, that could very well be on you, cupcake. On the other hand, if you’re providing feedback like “I take this path in the game and it takes twice as long to achieve half the success as my opponent doing this path which is a fraction of the challenge even though the game encourages this action,” that is likely a good frustration to report.
That really is the nature of proper criticism, however. Blandly stating “this thing is bad and the creators are idiots for doing it” is not proper criticism. It’s noise. And I’m a strong proponent of the vast, vast, vast majority of feedback that creators get is useless noise. My stance is, listen to what your audience is telling you but never do what they say. The audience is often decent at pointing at something which is not working. They’re horrible at explaining why or offering successful fixes. Partly, they lack the full picture of design. Which isn’t that surprising if you consider their background. Most consumers are only familiar with consumption. They can tell if it upsets their stomach but they have no idea what is going on in their digestion.
So if all of them are saying that your creation isn’t working, they’re probably right. But most of the time they can’t pinpoint what’s wrong. So don’t listen to their fixes. Hell, a lot of the time the misdiagnose the issue in the first place.
So if you want to help creators, if you want to reduce your own noise output, just think of criticism sort of like a doctor’s visit. You know your body the best. You know when something isn’t working as it should. But you don’t know all the diseases and ailments that it could possibly be. So explain all the symptoms and how they deviate from the normal.
But by goodness, don’t come in with your diagnosis.
And please don’t call the next mechanic you lose to in a game a “Negative Play Experience.”
Well here is something new today. I don’t usually comment on social media and, outside this blog, fairly disconnect from the industry in general. But today I’m going to be commenting on someone else’s interview. Because that is a thing which people do, right?
So the fine folks over at win.gg were able to get a brief interview with some ex-Artifact developers. For those of you who don’t know, Artifact is a digital card game developed by Valve, skinned with Dota and one of my biggest disappointments of last year. You can check my full thoughts on that in an old blog post.
Artifact and all its associated images and mistakes belong to Valve.
I have, for a long time, had an interest in the nuts and bolts of productions – whether that being what goes behind putting together a successful play or the efforts and testing needed to complete a game design. It’s a peek into the creative process and I like seeing how other artists face the struggles of their chosen medium.
For this interview, win.gg spoke with Richard Garfield and Skaff Elias. These were the, for lack of a better descriptor, the outside consultation for Artifact. Garfield and Elias are the minds behind Magic: The Gathering – possibly one of the largest games in the world. That they partnered up with Valve to create a card game was exciting for many since their pedigree has dominated the card game genre nearly since its inception.
The game has been, to put bluntly, a disaster. As of this writing, there’s only a hundred or so concurrent players in the game. Valve has posted that they’ve practically gone back to the drawing board and doing a deep recalibration to the game in order to bring it in line.
Consequently, everyone and their mother has an opinion about why Artifact failed. I’m going to unironically share mine. But first let’s see what Richard Garfield and Skaff Elias think.
Largely, the first question is about the monetization of the game which is possibly Garfield’s more controversial answers but also cuts to the heart of the Artifact story.
When asked about the game’s “pay-to-win” component, Garfield says this:
“Pay-to-win is a sloppy term leveled at any game where you can buy components. You will see it leveled at any game in which a player, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to engage… I am an OK player and a mediocre deck constructor in Artifact, and access to all of the cards won’t change that. I might be able to overcome the mediocre deck construction by copying someone else’s deck but it won’t make me an excellent player. Likewise, I can spend thousands on golf clubs, but it won’t make me a golf champion.”
And, honestly, he’s right: to a point. Had Artifact actually taken off and there was a million dollar tournament like they promised, I would not win it if I owned all the cards. You can see this with really anyone that gets into a hobby. Owning all the gear won’t make you the best of the field. This is true.
It also completely sidesteps the issue of pay-to-win. For it ignores the fundamental problem which Garfield only barely acknowledges: if two equally skilled players face each other, the one who spent the most money will win.
For Garfield, this seems acceptable. He does say that netdecking (copying someone else’s deck, usually from a list online) will cover his flaws of being a poor deck constructor. He might not be able to pilot the deck like a champion but he will do better than if he were to face a theoretical mirror of himself who doesn’t netdeck.
At a competitive level, this is inconsequential. All players who want to be contenders are prepared to drop the money necessary to own all the cards – or at least the cards necessary to win tournaments.
But successful games aren’t made on their professional players. For a game to thrive, it needs a fanbase. And the average player is the one that baulks at the enormous entry cost of the game. It doesn’t matter that it lacks the ludicrously expense of Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall or Mox loxes or whatever is the newest overpriced piece of cardboard they have nowadays. That Garfield thinks it’s a winning argument to dismiss concerns over Artifact’s price by saying “Hey, at least you don’t have to spend $900 on a single card!” kind of strikes the head of the nail.
That Valve failed this is outstanding if only because Dota 2 literally built its entire game on this understanding.
I don’t know where things went so wrong. Maybe no one felt they could say no to Garfield. Maybe they just assumed Garfield knew more than them? I struggle to think that the developers at Valve are so out of touch with their own company that they couldn’t see the huge financial success of Dota 2 and think “No, that’s not how we’re going to do it… but we’ll try to convince these players otherwise by wallpapering everything with their favourite stuff.” Like… Dota 2 players don’t play Dota 2 because Axe is in it. They play it for the game (and, frankly, because it’s actually free otherwise they’d probably just be in League of Legends).
And I’m not certain the Dota 2 brand is interesting enough for someone to take a look at it and go “I have no idea what that is but hey, I really want to play the game with the big shirtless red guy with the weird mutton chops!” I think you pull in new people by word getting around that the game is really good. Good luck getting them through the door with the addendum, “Oh but it’ll cost you an arm and a leg to play. But hey, if you want to win a tournament, you don’t also have to sell your kidneys as well!”
So I’m fully unconvinced with the detractors who argue it wasn’t the price that sunk Artifact. There’s numerous people I’ve seen comment on Artifact being “not fun.” I hate this criticism. Largely because it’s empty. You know what I find “not fun?” Magic: The Gathering. Hasn’t stopped Wizards of the Coast making billions of dollars from the damn thing. At the very least, try to pinpoint what you don’t like about the game.
But most people, when pressed, complain that Artifact is “too random.” That or they complain that it isn’t fun to watch on twitch. As if that matters at all. For the latter… have they seen Fortnight? Or League of Legends? Or ducking Dota 2? If you have no idea what is going on in the game, it makes no damn sense and it doesn’t look fun in the least. People aren’t browsing Twitch for random game streams. They’re either a) looking at the most watched streams or b) looking up a game they’ve heard about. You don’t window shop on Twitch. As such, it doesn’t matter if it is understandable in five minutes of viewing. Someone will either say “Oh it’s a card game. I like card games. This is really popular, it must be good and maybe I’ll sit and figure it out.” Or they’ll say, “Why the hell are a bunch of people playing chess with Dota pieces? This nonsense is stupid and I’m going back to watching people try to build impromptu tree houses and shoot each other in the face.”
As for the randomness, it does exactly what it’s supposed to do.
Actually, the RNG (random number generator – used as a shorthand for randomness) fulfils two purposes. One, it actually makes the game more watchable. If you don’t have some manner of randomness, you actually have a boring game. No, change that. You have a puzzle. Like, if you played Solitaire but the deck was always set up in a specific way, you wouldn’t play Solitaire for very long. You might enjoy figuring out the puzzle but once it’s solved, you’re done. You shelve it because there’s nothing else from that constructed deck for you.
I mean, all card games have a large portion of RNG built right into them. The deck is RNG! You shuffle the deck at the start of every game. You get kicked out of tournaments for stacking your deck. You have to have a randomized pile from which all of your actions are drawn. This is inherent to the genre. Begging for a mulligan is basically arguing that you don’t want to play the game at all.
Course, this isn’t an invitation to descend into arguments about mulligans. Mulligans, in-of-themselves, are a whole other conversation. Suffice to say, Artifact gives you two card draw at the start of your turn which is more than enough to make up for a lack of a mulligan. It works for Artifact. You don’t need a mulligan at the start.
Second, and most importantly, those damn arrows in Artifact give you something on which to blame your losses.
If there is one thing I’ve learned from the average player, is they want above all to protect the ego. They will say otherwise, but it is really the only explanation I can make for the constant complaining around the direction arrows in Artifact. Frankly, if you don’t like the arrows, then maybe you simply don’t like the game. That’s fine. I don’t like Magic. Not everything is made for you. You can go back to Hearthstone or Magic or whatever. You will be missed.
But seriously, the arrows are perhaps one of the most ingenious mechanisms I’ve seen offered in a card game and really set the distinction for Artifact. It makes Artifact not a “digital adaptation of a tabletop game” but something that literally could only exist in a digital space. This opens up really interesting avenues of design and even impacts the skill level of the players. Fighting for initiative is an important layer in Artifact and having a card like Apprentice Assassin who can “waste” an action trying to force your opponent to play before you is a moment of beautiful clarity in Artifact. Possibly because Apprentice Assassin is a good card for more than just durdling and it’s just yet another application of an ability that is inherently good. It also impacts the decision on where to play cards.
And this, I think, is what turns off more players than are willing to admit. Artifact isn’t an “autopilot” game. I’d argue, it’s possibly the most intensive card game to play. For constructed card games, there are two important skills for a player to develop: building a deck and playing the deck. If you’ve watched League of Legends or Dota, the closest equivalent would be playing the game and drafting the game. And the two skills are wholly different. Some card games really emphasize deck building. I’ve been told that Magic is about 90% deck building and the rest is just playing what you draw. Most of my friends who love Magic keep telling me that constructing a deck and realizing your construction is the heart of the game. Course, the colours in Magic allow some leeway in this push and pull of piloting and building but I’d argue that Artifact is somewhere in the realm of 80-90% about playing a deck and not building it.
There are so many decision points in Artifact that entirely revolve around the flow of play that you really have to consider your choices. The better you get at the game, the more difficult choices you discover in the course of a match. For instance, when you first pick up Artifact, you try and keep your heroes alive as much as you can. Death is the most discouraging fate for your heroes and you bemoan every single stray arrow that leads a minion curving into your poor Luna and away from that fat, twenty health tower.
Course, once you realize that dying gives you a “free” teleport in that you can now position Luna into a more advantageous lane and that losing one tower doesn’t end the game, you start to purposefully kill your own heroes. Stranding your opponent’s Bristleback, Axe and Centaur to a lane they’ve already won as you redeploy into the last two lanes and destroy them before you opponent can reposition is such a great feeling when you pull it off. And this is why I consider the complaints of the arrows to be utter nonsense. Not only are you aware of arrow placements for all units already on the board at the start of every round, but there are so many decisions and plays you can make that there is never a game where you lost “because of that one stupid arrow.” An Ogre Conscript may have curved into that dumb Crystal Maiden instead of whacking off the last four health of that second lane tower right before your opponent takes throne in the third, but to get to that position required so many other branching options that I can guarantee the losing player could have done something different at an earlier point in the match to have avoided that fate.
And that’s what I love so much about Artifact. Despite appearing to be more “chaotic” the design actually gives the player more control than almost any other card game I’ve played. It’s in the Netrunner category of high strategy without relying so heavily on asymmetrical knowledge.
Now, I do understand some people finding the base game boring. Which is fair if they’re coming from those games years of maturation and iteration on their game mechanics. Play the first release of Magic or Hearthstone and you’ll also find a rather straightforward game. If you just want a mature scene, that’s fair. But if given the opportunity, I’d argue Artifact has far greater depth to explore than either of those games because it is free of their design limitations. Valve even introduced some new mechanics when rebalancing several of the cards right before they entered radio silence. Lion got the Quicken ability which reduces the cooldown of a skill every time it gets used. I can easily envision some sort of ability or card that would allow a free use or a faster use of an ability that could combo with Quicken and make Finger of Death a real reckoning force.
Since the game is designed around a computer doing much of the computation, there is a great deal of directions that the game could take. After its release, I was enthralled with following communities who created their own custom cards. Some of them were really smart and if Valve took even half of their ideas, they would rival Magic and Hearthstone combined.
Unfortunately, there is a final component to Artifact’s failing that I must touch upon. I don’t quite know if its the gaming community at large or just those specifically with Valve. However, there’s a concerted group who want to see Artifact fail. It is… unhealthy. I don’t like Keyforge. You wouldn’t know this because I wouldn’t bring it up other than to make a point. I don’t go to the Keyforge subreddit and bitch about it constantly. I don’t make an active effort to deride Keyforge, mock its failing numbers (I honestly don’t know nor care about its numbers) and I don’t insult and belittle the people who do like Keyforge.
The same can’t be said for Artifact. There is a hate brigand the likes of which I have never seen – and I saw the Gib Diretide nonsense. This might be something that Valve has to consider going forward. Whatever they do, there is a large and active community that wants to see it fail. I can’t imagine that Artifact by its lonesome stirred up such ire. I don’t want Valve to address it directly. But I hope they consider it when proposing more experimental approaches to releases. Hell, they may even have to break down and do some proper marketing to overcome it.
I still think there’s a fantastic product available. But Valve really has some hard decisions to make. I think revoking some of their earlier stances – stances I see echoed in Garfield and Elias’ answers – which really held the game back. Abandon this nonsense of “perceived value.” It’s ludicrous how overpriced and artificially inflated Magic cards are. We don’t need to go down that exploitative road. I’ve said it before, but Artifact could really benefit from the Dota treatment. Give it free (or at the very least dirt cheap) then offer alternate art, hats, imps, boards, loading screens, card effects and whatever other cosmetic nonsense to the players to jazz up their game. No one is going to place the same value on a couple lines of code as they would a physical piece of paper.
And it was ridiculous for them to even think that people would. Whatever they do, they have a lot of work ahead of them. The stink on Artifact will last a long time and Valve can’t rely on their goodwill anymore to overlook it. But they have the talent, skill and game itself to make the wait worthwhile.
So I’ll see you all again when Artifact 2.0 launches.
It struck me today that I have not done a game review for Warhammer: Vermintide 2 by Fat Shark Studios. This is, really, a bit of a tragedy. Especially since for the last year it’s basically all Derek and I have played.
So you shouldn’t be surprised when I say that I’m having a lot of fun with it.
Just a little bit of context: Derek and I made our way through Vermintide 1 but we were hardly experts. We played enough to get a sense of the game but arrived to it fairly late in its life. Adam convinced us to take the plunge, getting the game for very cheap in a Humble Bundle. If you haven’t heard of Humble Games, you should definitely check it out. It’s a fantastic way to get some slightly out-of-date games at amazing prices while supporting developers and charities alike. I don’t really use or follow it closely but every time I do use it, I get a steal of a deal.
Warhammer: Vermintide belongs to Fat Shark Studios and Games Workshop in whatever capacities those two reached an agreement.
As an aside, this game review is brought to you by Humbles Game Store. Totally unrelated, I swear.
Long story short, Adam played one map while Derek and I have become expert Vermintide players. I blame Derek.
And it really is his fault.
See, Derek is a completionist. He doesn’t like to consider a game finished until he has done everything there is to do in it. I thought he was crazy. I still do, actually. But now that we can compare our stats, and because I’m stupidly competitive, I’ve been trying to finish more games than him. So when we have a game we both play, we’re locked in until someone gives up. Sadly, we’re both stubborn.
Thankfully, Vermintide is actually fun.
See, Vermintide despite carrying the unfortunate Warhammer window dressings, is a rather engaging co-operative action game. I’m not sure how to classify it other than it is Left 4 Dead with swords and giant rats instead of shotguns and endless zombies. In Left 4 Dead, you and three other players work your way through a map fighting off periodic hordes of the undead while trying to survive and make it to the next “safe room.” It was a very successful game made by Valve. Which is to say once they released its sequel a year later, they haven’t touched the franchise at all leaving fans longing for more and wondering if one day they’ll ever be heard.
I’ve learned my habit of disappointing your audience straight from the masters themselves, you see.
Thankfully, where Valve left off, Fat Shark stepped in. They didn’t make an exact copy, what with Vermintide taking place in a medieval fantasy setting instead of a post-apocalyptic modern American setting, but the spirit remained the same. Four players must traverse levels while constantly besieged by rodents of unusual size, temperament and abilities. Vermintide 1 was fun and hectic, taking place in a city being overwhelmed by these tunnelling man-sized monstrosities during something called the End Times. I’d go into the story of Vermintide but it is neither particularly interesting nor particularly important. You show up. You kill rats. You get rewards. Mostly, the rewards don’t matter and you just repeat the same process over again because, strangely, killing the little furballs is rather fun.
And thankfully, Fat Shark kept to the same successful script as the first. What you get in Vermintide 2 is just more of that sweet murder goodness. Not to say the two games are an exact copy. The first major difference is that the five returning characters (Kruber, Kerillian, Sienna, Bardin and Salzpyre) come with three different classes each. These are more than just colourful personalities (like in Left 4 Dead), each of them has a particular set of weapons and skills available to them. Salzpyre runs around with a precise rapier and a truckload of single shot pistols. Sienna, on the other hand, burns rats with her magical sticks or bops them with a rusty mace.
In Vermintide 2, you’ve got even more customisation than just changing their weapons. These classes add a unique ability to the heroes as well as giving them separate class trees which provide small buffs to different gameplay aspects. With Hunter Kruber, you focus more on his ranged capabilities, giving him ammo on successful headshots or less weapon spread. Foot Knight Kruber, on the other hand, wants to rush in with his charge and slash monsters with his halberd. As such, he gets better stamina regeneration for blocking attacks and wider block angles. The talents have less impact than the class selection itself but you can kind of nudge the character in different directions to fit more your favourite style of slaying.
And it is good that players got more tools for killing because Fat Shark added a whole new faction of villains out to sever your head from your shoulders. Not only are you contending with the Skaven who lend their name to the title but it appears these manlike mammals have made an alliance with northern raiders who have devoted themselves to pestilence and decay. The Chaos Warriors have their own special characters that appear alongside their hordes to make your day difficult.
See, there are more than just an unending tide of mooks for you to kill. Left 4 Dead demonstrated that you need some rare, special enemies that can disrupt player lines and keep them from simply hunkering down in a corner to wait out the simple AI of rushing like lemmings into your awaiting bloody arms. In the original game you had poisonwind globadiers who would throw glass jars filled with poisonous gas. Packmasters ran forward with mancatchers to grab unsuspecting players and pull them haplessly into the heart of the swarm. Now, we have leech mages that appear behind you to vampirically siphon your soul or the blightstormers who conjure a tornado that will whip you around the map while they teleport behind cliffs so you can’t kill them and end your suffering.
Vermintide 2 also added three additional monsters to fight. These act as bosses for the level that represent a challenging fight against a hulking terror that is capable of killing the entire group on its own. In the first game, this role was filled by the rat ogre who, after twenty or so different maps, had become so predictable as to offer little challenge or concern. Fat Shark introduced the Stormfiend, Chaos Spawn and Bile Troll. Each act entirely different and force players to adopt different tactics depending on which and where they face down.
Perhaps most heartening is that Fat Shark have really improved their design from the first game. There are some companies and products that… demonstrate a complete lack of ability to self-reflect either on their genre or even their own past work. These studios somehow manage to make sequels that are weaker than their original inspirations, drowned in poor design choices that choke out what good they’re able to create.
When it comes to maps, however, Fat Shark have really stepped it up. Granted, gone are the shorter maps that I really enjoyed in the first game. But, I’m not certain if I enjoyed those maps because of the design or because I could fly through them in half the time of a regular map. While Black Powder and Waterfront provided a nice change in pace, given that those maps often required alternative means to end the mission, there were few really standout entries. Wizards Tower was perhaps the most interesting. Vermintide 2, however, has done a lot in terms of mixing up objectives in maps while providing interesting layouts and locations with distinct personalities. Temple of Shallya has a very interesting visual progression from a hospital into some body horror hellscape before culminating in a big bowl of algae soup. Interestingly enough, it also happens to be the only map which you have to complete about ten laps around a track to finish.
But the most exciting part of Vermintide 2 is the support that it has received since its release. Not only were there two DLCs (that I skipped because I’m poor) but there’s also an announced expansion coming out this summer which will introduce a third faction of critters to kill: the Beastmen!
So, here’s hoping to hundreds of more hours of murder with my favourite non-contributing author in the months to come.
Here’s a relevant review of a product that’s meant to cash in on your nostalgia.
I bet, of all the things you expected me to write about, it would not be on the new Detective Pikachu movie. I would not blame you for being surprised. I would not have expected to be writing a review about it either. Detective Pikachu is the sort of movie wholly outside of my wheelhouse.
Detective Pikachu is profitable trainwreck of Warner Bros. Pictures, The Pokemon Company and Rob Letterman. Obviously the images and rights belong to them and not me.
Well, I suppose that’s not entirely true. It is a video game adaptation. And I do play video games. I’ve even seen some of the other video game adaptation movies of years past. All of them have been stinkers.
So if you’re as good at pattern recognition as I am, then you can probably guess how well this movie turned out to be.
Course, as a movie review, it should go without saying that I’m going to be spoiling the movie in order to discuss it. But if you’re also trying to keep yourself from spoiling yourself on Detective Pikachu then… well… frankly I’m surprised that your interests overlap so much with mine for you to have arrived on this humble blog in the first place.
So, for the short version of my Detective Pikachu review: It’s scattered, terribly paced and poorly acted.
For my long version review: It’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.
And we’re done here.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. There are several kinds of bad movies. With varying levels of emotional response from me. There are the bad movies that are so bad they’re good. My heart shall always belong to the hot hail of Flash Gordon and I will fight anyone who cannot comprehend its majesty.
This is not Flash Gordon bad, however.
Then there are the bad movies that are so boring and uninspired that I completely forget what happened the moment I emerge from the movie theatre. There the ones I can hardly be upset about, largely because they induce in my a temporary amnesia that blocks any recollection of what I’d seen. It’s like a nap but not nearly as restful. I’d give an example of these kinds of movies but I simply can’t recall any.
And Detective Pikachu isn’t that bad either.
There’s the insultingly awful. That type of movie that seeks to impart a personal grievance in its audience. The sort of movie that wraps itself up in some false pretension or manages to garner a suspiciously loud group of supporters and lulls you into the sense that it might be good – or at the very least, not bad.
But this wasn’t Gone Girl.
This was the Get Out of children’s movies. I expect Detective Pikachu to do well. It’s the sort of bad movie that drives a deep seated anger within me. It’s the bad movie with a large soul of promise that, through either studio meddling or directorial fumbling, completely squanders its potential on face-palming idiotic decisions that should never have cleared the writing workshop let alone survive the editing room.
And I’m surprised to see Detective Pikachu to land itself in this category of bad movie.
Full disclosure: I have never beaten a Pokemon game. I’ve played one, largely in Japanese, and am familiar enough with the franchise to follow its particular quirks and jingoisms. I did not grow up with Pokemon, missing the memetic phenomenon by the measure of two or so years. In terms of things that are popular, I respect it without having any interest in it. For me, Pokemon is pretty harmless. Sure, it butchers the idea of evolution but it is pretty nondescript in its existence and there are far worse things that have had just as much mass appeal.
I did not expect to like Detective Pikachu and thus I was taken by surprise when I actually found myself enjoying myself. Course, that was fleeting as joy turned to confusion pretty quickly. And once the confusion set it, it took hold with an iron grip that didn’t let go right up to the hilariously unoriginal Bill Nighy finale which was strangely contradictory with the few establishing scenes used for it but a mere forty minutes prior.
I want a Detective Mr. Mime movie.
So, let’s spend some time about what went well. This should be short, because it was fleeting in the movie itself.
What caught me off-guard was how… unfocused Detective Pikachu was. It’s a movie that doesn’t seem like it knows itself. It waddles between a bone-headed children’s movie whose sole and blatant purpose is to push merchandising and nothing else and some strangely adult mystery thriller rooted in childhood nostalgia.
Obviously, I’m attracted to its latter leanings. But also, much like Captain America: Winter Soldier, this strange dip into a secondary genre left me realizing that I desperately want a Pokemon detective thriller. It works and it works really well when it embraces this direction. I’m reminded of the television show Fillmore!
Fillmore! is a children’s parody of the stock 1970s police drama. And it’s really clever in taking that genre’s tropes and exploring them through a juvenile lens. There’s a lot of cross-generational entertainment and humour that can be generated from this, demonstrated by Detective Pikachu’s interrogation scene with the Mr. Mime Pokemon. The movie also extremely excels in its realistic portrayal of Pokemon characters. Which first comes across as entirely creepy but is so ubiquitous and seamlessly integrated that I found I bought this aspect of the movie pretty quickly.
Couple this with an older protagonist and the decision to frame the narrative as a detective story, and I can’t help but feel this mature direction for the movie was deliberate. And, honestly, it was rather refreshing. I can’t think of many children’s movies that have a main character so old that they’re out of school and I give Detective Pikachu mad respects for doing so.
Thus, it’s a shame when the movie, also much like Winter Soldier, quickly drops its detective tropes and falls gleefully into mindless action and brain-dead spectacle. What starts off as a really promising story about a young man searching for his father quickly degenerates into power fantasy nonsense that’s so illogical, more than half the screen dialogue is the characters trying to explain everything going on because the premise is just that stupid.
There’s also the issue that the movie has so many visual nods to its game origins that it can’t help but stuff character dialogue with highlighting these nods. There’s an inelegance on display here that is stupefying. Movies are already pressed for time with character development and narrative progression that it leaves me wondering why you need characters to constantly inform the audience that “these are tortugas” and “this is a greninja” star especially when you just showed this stuff a second ago.
And then the movie decides it really wants to focus its plot around Mewtwo because surely the audience is going to be emotionally invested in this purple, weirdly cat shaped deus ex machina instead of focusing or strengthening the emotional plot of the protagonist and his relationship with his father and the world around him.
And that’s really when the movie goes off the rails.
Course, there’s a lot that’s bad with the movie beyond its empty plot. The acting is, quite frankly, embarrassing. The two leads are so flat and boring that I can’t even remember their names. I get that CGI flicks are difficult to act in, but it doesn’t excuse these two people for being so wooden amongst themselves. I believe the girl loves her duck more than she does the boy and her attempts to sell the otherwise embarrassingly juvenile dialogue only highlights how poorly the lines are written.
And, of course, the lead male’s performance left me reminiscing about Keanu Reeve’s portrayals in the Matrix. The Matrix worked around Keanu’s constant state of flummox by having his character legitimately confused with everything he encounter. Detective Pikachu is nowhere near as savvy and anytime an emotionally demanding scene arrives, we have a man (who I still can’t remember his name) staring vapidly either at his yellow rat or right into your soul.
And, let’s be honest here, Ryan Reynolds is reprising Deadpool here.
Simply put, I would not recommend Detective Pikachu unless you’re a diehard Pokemon fan (in which seeing all the Pokemon on screen with such a… surprisingly art style) will surely tickle your fancy. Or if you have kids. Because let’s be frank, if children can like Peppa Pig, they will literally like anything so long as its colourful.
Now, normally I would sign off here, but I want to present to you what would have been my ideal Detective Pikachu movie. Because, as I said, this movie is frustrating due to its surprising potential.
I think the movie should have committed entirely to its detective parody. Play up the secondary characters as greater pastiches. The reporter would make a terrific femme fatale, especially if you lean into her intern background being at odds with her killer journalistic instincts.
I also came to love this idea of having everyone with a Pokemon companion and there is no reason that more sight gags couldn’t be incorporated into the movie with these critters. A simple one would be having a young girl or refined lady come to claim the weird and gross tongue creature on the train. Even more, I would have liked the Mr. Mime – easily the best character of the movie – to have played a greater part. Make the Mr. Mime the companion of one primary antagonist and allow it to have additional opportunity to vex and frustrate the heroes.
Bonus points awarded if you gave the Mr. Mime burn scars after the interrogation with the protagonist.
Course, I think for the movie to really shine, it needs to drop the weird Mewtwo insertion. I don’t understand this need for grandiose plots and perhaps this is Hollywood trying to desperately cash in on the comicbook hero craze. But Detective Pikachu should have had a much narrower focus. It’s a little cliched but honestly, this movie would have benefited with the emotional struggles of an estranged son searching for his absent father.
This is an apt representation of the Detective Pokemon experience.
As such, a more typical detective plot would work better as it would detract less from the father/son relationship. I’d personally suggest a story revolving around underworld match fixing of Pokemon battles. Because I both recognize that children want to see these creatures beat the living snot from each other and it further pulls at the nostalgia strings of the older generations. It allows easy insertion of action beats (an unfortunate necessity in this day and age) and can also be tied back to the protagonists childhood dreams of being a Pokemon trainer (thus allowing character development). I’d personally through in Pokemon Rights protestors as a cheeky way to poke fun at the fact that Pokemon is little more than glorified cock fighting but that’s just me.
With this setup, I’d give the primary underworld mob boss the Mr. Mime as his (or hers) Pokemon companion. And, of course, I’d have a chase scene with the Mr. Mime, pretty much go as one would expect after seeing the movie’s interrogation scene.
Also, price fixing is the sort of villainous action that requires but a fraction of an explanation compared to the purple mist of Detective Pikachu. For greater stakes, you could say the city’s mayor is indebted to the mob or whoever due to gambling debts if you wanted. And maybe have the villain trying to legalise underground Pokemon battles or something else if you really wanted.
Course, this would necessitate removing a talking Pikachu from the movie. But I say leave Ryan Reynolds to cheap romantic comedies and the Deadpool franchise.
Oh hi there. I didn’t see you there. Come in, come in. It’s been some time, hasn’t it. Well take a seat. This place is just as comfortable as it always is. Everyone is welcome.
Pay the dust no mind.
So, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted. And boy, have we had some big changes in that time. A new look and a new address, all of which we have Derek to thank. So, thank you Derek, your hard work is always appreciated!
A little bit of an update: I didn’t fall of the face of the earth for no good reason. I’m hard at work on the Clockwork Caterpillar sequel. We’ve got pre-order and previews in the works and hopefully we’ll be making more noise about that in no time. So keep an eye out for that.
But now that I have some breathing room from scribbling out draft after draft, it is high time that I go for a little bit of a ramble about just life and all the minute things that make it up.
The title of this article gives enough of the topic away but let’s add a dash of context. A friend of mine – let’s call her Rikki for no particular reason – and I really like to watch horror movies. Now, I’m not a horror fan. I’m not a true believer in the genre and I’ve certainly expressed my thoughts on its shortcomings in the past. No, specifically we like to watch bad horror movies. There’s some measure of joy to watch a work of art that utterly fails to achieve its goal. It’s another thing to watch such a trainwreck fail to reach any goal. This is essentially an endorsement of Wiseau’s The Room. Check it out!
So Rikki and I like to get together every month and just sit back and scroll through the movies that no one wants to see. We prefer the comfort of our own homes because we engage in the age old tradition of heckling while the flick is on. A meta-commentary of work is so popular it spawned its own long running series (Mystery Science Theatre 3000 – check it out as well!). I would never record and release this sort of thing, obviously. But it is immense fun.
Only, every now and then there’s a snag. Every now and then we screw up. Instead of putting on a real stinker we stumble into an actual good movie.
And this has lead into an interesting revelation for me.
Now, I’m well aware of the subgenres of horror. You have body horror, slasher films, cosmic horror, splatterhouse or even the oddly specific holiday horror. But one of the more interesting elements of this style of fiction is how telling it is of its creators. Many philosophers and artists allege that fear is the greatest emotion known to mankind. I’m sure Lovecraft has waxed poetically about it before diving into his strange fetish for scaly, long noses. But while fear is certainly a common experience for mankind, what scares us certainly is not.
In a way, if eyes are windows to the soul, horror films are the garage door to the director’s psyche. You get to see the shadowy shapes that wiggle just beneath the surface of the subconscious and see just what causes the bumps which keep them up at night.
For some, it is incredibly mundane witches, ghosts or witch ghosts that can’t stand you having more Facebook friends than them. But every now and then, a director is able to take their midnight terrors and do something extraordinary with them.
They make a message.
So here I list Rikki and mine’s worst failures. Here are two movies that, against our best intentions, actually turned out well.
The Babadook
The Babadook and all associated images and whatnot belong to Causeway Films, Entertainment One and whoever else.
Sure, anyone who follows the horror genre is probably rolling their eyes. Of course The Babadook is good. Anyone who doesn’t keep their head in the sand during 2014 would know this. Well, first, I like it there. The sand helps to regulate temperature really well.
Second, I don’t take critical consensus seriously after I was convinced to watch a horror movie about a lethargic walking STD despite everyone crowing about how brilliant it is.
Thus, I recommended the Babadook based on the fact that I wanted to see some silly Australians running around from a ridiculous looking person in a top hat.
And I have to admit, I was not prepared.
Now, the Babadook isn’t scary. I don’t really find horror movies scary. But the Babadook is good. And it’s because it managed something that I had not thought possible. It used our feelings of fear to peel back the layers of psychological defences the director had raised to reveal a very compelling story about the difficulties and shame surrounding grief.
Thus, the Babadook did two things I had not seen. One, it was a story very strongly feminine. As I’ve stated, I’m not a horror genre expert, but so often are we presented what scares men. Even when the protagonist is a woman, the films themselves are very… attuned for the male’s perspective. I mean, how many times do we have the female protagonist running through showers of blood or rolling around in the mud while wearing a shear blouse or, more often than not, just her panties and bra?
In contrast, The Babadook is positively mormon. Here, Amelia Vanek is a single mother attempting to raise her precocious and not-entirely-all-there son Sam. The story is, largely, a slow boil wherein Sam’s awkwardness and social failings cause ever growing stress and grief for Amelia. Sam is convinced that he must protect his mother from a monster only he can see. And Amelia, as a single working mother with strained relations to her sister, is stretched to her wits end.
It’s an excellent story which, handled by any other, would surely have looked simply through Sam’s eyes and watched as his mother turned into a raving, murderous creature which the son must slay in order to save. But, instead, despite Amelie’s inability to address this mysterious Babadook (which is so thinly veiled to be the representation of her grief towards the death of her husband – I mean it manifests as him at one point when it demands that Sam be brought to him!) the story never really abandons Amelie. This is her tale, even as she does unspeakable things in her attempts to calm her child and hold to the fraying threads of her unravelling life.
But even more impressive is the finale. It’s a staple in horror films that even when the supernatural threat is banished, there’s always that last minute shot of it coming back or having ultimately succeeded. This is represented with a happy Sam collecting worms for Amelie and presenting her the dented dog dish with the earthy insect laden mess. Sam then asks if he can “take care of it” and Amelie’s answer has stayed with me ever since:
“You will when you’re older.”
The Babadook is more a story about responsible parenting: Don’t let others buy your kid children’s stories.
It’s such a sucker punch reveal that the grief we carry isn’t just our own. Sam, who had no hand in the creation of this devastation in his mother, will later inherit this morbid manifestation once he’s fully capable of understanding the loss of a father he’s never known. Then he too will have to learn to take his own bowl of worms down to a monster that he will never live without.
I had not signed on to learn something about life.
Await Further Instructions
Await Further Instructions belongs to Johnny Kevorkian and Dark Sky Films.
This one is entirely on Rikki. To be fair to her, however, not only does this movie have a ridiculous title, it’s also got a really cheap film look to it that just screams “unintentional comedy.”
And I’ll readily admit that there’s a distinct difference in quality between Await Further Instructions and The Babadook. But this movie is still way better than it has any right to be. I don’t know what it is with foreign films but somehow they seem to churn out more thought provoking horror than their North American counterparts.
I wonder if there’s a thesis topic in there.
Await Further Instructions takes the opposite approach to The Babadook. While it focuses on a family Christmas dinner in what I can only assume are the suburbs of Britain, it’s subject matter branches far afield from the intensely personal tale of Amelie. Instead of commenting on the human condition, Await Further Instructions is leveraging its critical eye to society.
And there’s just something about fascism that simply does not gel well with British artists. Well, fascism doesn’t gel well with any artists but certainly its a topic that the British are far more willing to address their ire.
Await targets what I can only assume is the very British response of clamping down during an emergency and being as obedient as possible to authority. Not a necessarily inappropriate response in many circumstances. Certainly if a building is madly aflame, most would encourage trapped persons to obey the fire marshal.
But what happens if the fire marshal starts giving questionable directives?
Await follows the Milgram (heh) family as they awake Christmas Day to discover their house has been sealed by a mysterious black synthetic barrier. Concern spreads quickly, especially since Nick wanted to depart early given that his Indian girlfriend Annji was not going over well with his slightly racist family.
Then the television flickers on and an otherworldly green message flashes its instructions to the family. This cements in the mind of the patriarch Tony that this is a government quarantine and they must wait out the catastrophe following good old daddy parliament’s directives. Course, this quickly turns into a question of blind obedience to authority once the television begins flashing highly suspect orders and Tony puts his entire family’s life in danger while trying to maintain his quickly unravelling order.
Now, Await struggles in presenting a well written and well performed piece. But its theme is certainly far stronger than most the ghoulies and goblins are offered in the genre. Someone really hates Fox Nows. Or, more precisely, whatever form Fox News takes in Great Britain. All the family’s bad decisions are preceded by obeying the ever growing ridiculous demands of the television which mostly seems to want to torture the Milgrams. This is obviously contrasted with the seemingly normal Christmas Eve were dear old Granddad is watching the news and commenting on how the world is going to shit because of the immigrants and they need to kick them all out while staring hard at the doctor-in-training Annji.
Nick’s rebelliousness uncovers the horrible truth that the television hosts some strange alien synthetic organism which wants nothing more than the adulation and worship of its viewers. A goal that is easily achieved with the highly susceptible Tony who keeps appealing to the cross hanging above the television anytime he’s about to carry out the next unimaginable order against his children. There’s a lot of good ideas wrapped up in here that, given a skilled hand, would have really taken off.
Course, in the end, it’s a bit heavy handed. But the horror is far more ambitious than the ghost of a little girl trying to get revenge on her sisters thirty years after they accidentally contributed to her drowning. It’s a fear with a message and elevates a work that would otherwise have been ripe for parodying and mockery. Course, it’s elevated to more a position of awkward mediocrity wherein it’s a flawed but somewhat valuable work.
I have to say the weird green glow did get a little tiresome.
But it has done more than a lot of other films better crafted than it: It showed that horror can be more than dopamine for the id. It can provoke thought and conversation over difficult matters of both personal and societal importance.
And these movies demonstrate that not all our fears are unfounded. Its how we address what we fear that matters, and whether we can turn that terror into a better solution.
I really liked this book. So much so, that I finished reading it once and two days later started re-reading the entire book again. More importantly, I my second read-through was intentionally slower. I was reading for all the little details I missed I hurried through my first read too caught up in the action and adventure of the story to be bothered with the little things.
As far as I can tell, speed reading is just a means of skimming through pages. I am not terrible at scanning and following stories as so many of them follow very familiar and predictable paths. And generally, I still get enough enjoyment out of my material to not feel the need of changing. But every so often a story resonates with me. Those are the ones that I want to read a second (or third or …) time. And this was one of those stories.
Book cover for Rules of Redemption by TA White. Image from the internet.
Rules of Redemption is a space-fantasy. There are lots of starships, space bases, aliens, laser weapons and intergalactic wars. There are also alien-wizards, who could be more advanced or just magical. As has been stated before: advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic.
Kira is a fantastically strong and perfectly flawed lead character. Once she lead one of humanity’s most effect military groups in fighting the dastardly Tsavitee aileen race bent on universal domination and destruction. Nicknamed Pheonix, Kira was a powerful fighter and leader until she abandoned that life for the quiet solitude of a salvager. But of course fate will not leave such an interesting character alone. Docked at a space station for repairs, Kira will draw unwanted attention for both the human military leaders and visiting Tuann ambassadors. This will lead to some uncomfortable truths about her own origins as Kira is swept away to a home she doesn’t remember and family she doesn’t want. Though the feeling is mutual, as her family is reluctant to welcome her back into the fold.
With plenty of action, future tech and alien creatures it is a fun read. There is also some interesting characters with deep histories and just a hint of romance to keep me properly engaged. So much is learned in this first book of the series, but there are also many unanswered questions. Such that I wish I had a bookclub with whom I could discuss this book.
Note: incase it needs to be stated, spoilers will follow
Some things that drew my attention: Odin, the experimental base, the source of the Tsavitee and Greydon.
Who is Odin? Is he (or she – it doesn’t specify, but for now I will use male pronouns) really the genius out to help Kira or does he have another motive? Could odin be a Tsavitee in hiding? Could Odin be part of the human political network, the consortium? Have we met this character going by another name? Because if that is the cause I could make a guess at who it really is. Does the author even know who Odin is? There are so many questions, mostly stemming from the fact that Odin knows both that Kira is on that space station and she is being followed. Sure he could have hacked the stations cameras, but he could also have been present on the station. My gut feeling though, is that Odin is going to be the cause of betrayal in the next book. Either he will directly betray Kira, or cause Kira to do something that has her betraying her new friends/family.
Despite my second read through, I cannot remember if the location of the evil research facility that held Kira when she was growing up was in human space or not. It is mentioned that the scientists working at the facility were Tsavitee, does this explain how she knows the language? But were humans also present? Because that would only spike the tensions between Tuann and humanity. Did anyone else escape from the centre?
Where do the Tsavitee come from? It is discussed that they look very different, but are genetically similar. Did they create themselves or were they created by someone else? Is there a greater link between the Tsavitee and say the Tuann than anyone realizes? And why would they keep a human hostage for over a decade?
Greydon, the Emperor’s Face, is from the House Roake. Is he also a primus? Because he doesn’t shift, but certainly acts like he would be strong enough to do so. And exactly does Kira fit into that House? Though I am guessing that her father was the previous Overlord, so she is likely going to be tested for that potential. This I think is where the second book will pick up. But will Kira take responsibility for a House when she has a personal mission to infiltrate and free those captured by the Tsavitee?
There are so many exciting and unanswered questions with brings me to the biggest complaint. Why do I have to wait so long for the sequel?
I have read many of Tanya Huff’s fantasy novels, but this was my first of her science fiction. An Ancient Peace by Tanya Huff is the first novel in the Peacekeeper Trilogy.
While I still feel a little like I am missing something, it helped that most of the narrative focused around Torin. Grounded by the Gunnery Sargent, I was able to navigate the rest of the book. I found the story compelling enough I want to read the sequels. I like the strength of the main protagonist; Torin is a strong and respected individual. She is legendary within the military circles of the Corps. While Torin certainly kicks butt throughout the book, she also has an attitude and force of personality that make for a very strong character.
The books are filled with Gail Carriger’s characteristic quirky writing style. There is an abundance of dirigible hijinks, werewolves, vampires and cleverly colourful characters. Carriger has an engaging, highly entertaining writing style. Her cast of characters are well conceived, colourfully described and largely diverse. These are great books, which I thoroughly enjoyed – once I got in them.
It is finally summer and my goal is to read – at least for the first couple of weeks.
